Beware Of Darkness
by Briar Rose Black
Summary: Harry defeats Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic at the end of his 5th year. Or does he? Celebration turns to terror, and in the blink of an eye Harry once again goes from hero to public enemy #1. Warning for Sirius/Remus.
1. The Hours After

**Chapter 1 : The Hours After**

There was a feast.

It was in Harry's honor as much as it was in honor of anything else, but it was more than half over by the time he arrived in the Great Hall, pushed through the double doors by an irate McGonagall.

It was simply a fact that things like the fall of a dark wizard had to be celebrated. Things like the end of a war. It didn't make any difference how many people died, or that they died only hours before. You just shoved your mourning aside and celebrated. It didn't make any difference if there was a gaping hole inside you where your heart used to be. You just celebrated with everyone else.

They rose from their seats and clapped.

The hole inside him was swelling with black, swirling waters. He had been drowning in that pit of darkness for hours, fighting the pain and hatred. He had known he would lose that fight. He had kept away because he had felt something coming. He had felt that black wave rising in him, and he felt powerless to keep it at bay.

There were gasps. Suddenly they were not clapping anymore. There was no celebration.

They hadn't won the war. The dark wizard hadn't fallen.

_Couldn't_ fall. Not while Harry lived.

He understood it in that moment, and he threw back his head and laughed. There wasn't a bit of mirth in his laughter, but it came up out of his throat anyway, because as he understood, so did the thing inside him understand. And it laughed, and he laughed, and the laughter came up out of him on a wave of blackness, and then he knew no more for a very long time.

* * *

"Fight it, Potter."

There was something about the voice that cut through the darkness and managed to reach him.

"Fight it like it's the Imperius."

He wanted to obey that voice. Something terrible would happen if he didn't, he was certain.

There was something in his head besides his own mind. He didn't know how he knew this, because he was somehow very sure that he had never been aware of his mind being a thing that could be shoved aside. It was as if something else had grown and expanded until there was no choice but for his mind to retreat and shrink. There wasn't enough room in his head for both his mind and the thing that had grown there.

"Listen to my voice, Potter. Fight it."

He tried pushing back. It was like pushing against water; it just gave way where he pushed against it, but pushed in somewhere else.

"You will never see your friends again."

Faces seemed to float out of the darkness and hover in front of him. He did not know them except instinctively. They were his friends.

He pushed harder.

"You will never use magic again."

"Severus, is this really the only way?"

"It is if you want him back."

He pushed harder. He knew those voices. More faces floated out of the darkness.

"You will lose your soul."

"Severus."

Just as he had become aware of his mind being a shrunken, cowering thing inside his head, so too now he became aware of his soul being a thing that had been shoved aside to make room for something else.

He pushed against it, and pushed too hard, expecting it, too, to flow like water.

Instead it was solid, hard and cold, and when he pushed against it there was searing pain, as if he had reared back and punched a wall. White-hot light exploded before his eyes. His head was not big enough to contain it. Compressed impossibly, it found a weak spot and shot out of him in a lightning bolt of blinding agony.

"Merlin."

"I don't think that will go undetected."

"No."

"Time to leave."

For the first time, he became aware of his body. It was being squeezed on all sides, all air gone from his lungs. A scream formed in his throat, but he did not have the strength to release it. Once again, darkness closed around him and he knew no more.


	2. Missing Pieces

**Chapter 2 : Missing Pieces**

Harry was sure that he was awake, though it took him several minutes to convince himself. He had tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids did not budge. His hands, too, lay uselessly by his sides when he tried to raise them. His ears heard nothing. All of his senses were useless to him, except one, and that told him only that something cool and moist lay across his forehead and face, and was perhaps the reason he could not open his eyes. The reason for the darkness.

He licked his lips, which were dry and cracked. He tasted blood.

He was starting to be frightened. He couldn't remember where he was, or why, or who was there with him. His body refused to obey him. Something was wrong with his eyes, aside from not being able to open them. They burned.

In desperation, he tried to call out, but something was wrong with his throat, too, and the pain sent his head reeling. His entire body felt as though it had been set on fire, and then was suddenly cold and clammy, and he shivered uncontrollably.

"Harry? No, don't try to speak, Harry." There was a sound like glass clinking against glass. "I'm going to help you drink."

A hand snaked under his head and raised it, and then something smooth and cool was pressed against his lips. He drank greedily. It was not water, but at the moment he did not care what he was being given, only that it was cold and soothed the soreness in his throat.

"That's enough for now."

Harry's lips felt a bit numb. His tongue tingled. When he tried to speak, all that came out was a hideous moan, and the hand holding up his head set him back down and withdrew hastily.

He tried to connect the disembodied voice to a face, but everything was disjointed and jumbled in his head. The voice was tantalizingly familiar. The hand helping him up had been gentle. He should know this man, and it uneased him that he didn't.

"He's awake?"

"Yes. I gave him the potion."

Harry tried in vain to remember. He knew this man too, he was sure of it, but the memory was out of reach.

"Potter?"

He knew he would not be able to reply. His mouth was numb. His tongue was impossibly swollen. His throat felt raw.

"Has he said anything?"

"No... no, but he moaned. Maybe he's in pain."

"Could be. At the very least his throat must be sore from screaming. I will give him something."

Shortly thereafter he was raised up again and warm, bitter liquid was poured into his mouth.

"Swallow, Potter. Damn it. Lupin, get a cloth."

Lupin. That did sound very familiar, didn't it? His head was swimming, making thinking even more difficult than before.

"Is he out?"

"Hard to say. I suppose he drank enough."

His thoughts floated away, and the voices floated away with them.

* * *

"Harry?"

Harry turned his head toward the voice. He had been awake for what felt to him like a long time. He was starting to get used to waking in silent darkness, unable to see or move. This time, at least, he was not hurting.

"You're awake, then."

He was unsurprised when a hand helped his head up. He drank what he was given.

He was left alone for several minutes. Locked in darkness as he was, his other senses tried to compensate, feeding his hunger to know what was happening. He felt, rather than heard, the air in the room being disturbed by some kind of energy. The one sound that he had been able to hear, the soft swish of clothing, was gone. He puzzled over this. He would have heard the man -- Lupin -- leave; he had come to know the sound his shoes made on the floor. He had not heard him leave, but there was no sound in the room now, just the feeling of the air being charged. It felt like static electricity, raising up the hair on his arms slightly as the only sign of its presence.

Suddenly it was gone.

They were no longer alone, though he had not heard the other man -- Severus, the one whose shoes had heels that made a distinct sound -- come in.

"Harry? We're going to try to take the bandages off. Don't be frightened if you can't see at first. The light will be very dim, but it may still hurt you."

He steeled himself for more pain. Pain had been an almost constant companion. He would wake with it, and would fall into sleep with it still lingering over him, though dulled by the liquid poured into his mouth.

Layer by layer, the bandages were unwound. His eyes still burned, and the burning intensified as the layers peeled away and the remaining gauze let in more light. As the last of it fell away, he shut his eyes tight against the source of his pain.

"Open your eyes, Potter. There's only one candle, and it's behind you."

His eyes watered, overflowing onto his cheeks.

"Should we...?"

"No. Give him a chance to get used to it."

Some of the heat seemed to leave his eyes with the tears. He thought he could bear to crack his eyes open, if only to satisfy his curiosity.

"Good... good, Harry. Can you see?"

Shadows. Streaks of light. He shook his head.

"It's to be expected, Lupin. It hasn't been long enough."

"But his eyes will heal, won't they?"

Harry held his breath. Was he going to be blind? That thought had occurred to him more than once. His burning, aching eyes were the source of a great deal of the pain he felt. It wasn't a stretch to conclude that some terrible accident must have befallen him, damaging his eyes.

"I can hardly be certain of it, under the circumstances, but I believe so. The swelling is almost completely gone."

Harry let out his breath slowly.

"I wish he'd speak. Harry? Won't you say something?"

Harry licked his lips, recalling the last time he had tried, and the stabbing pain that had nearly rendered him unconscious. He recalled the wounded, barely human sound that had come out.

"I..." His voice caught in his dry throat and a fit of coughing seized him, cutting off his breath.

Something thick and slimy was forced into his mouth between choking coughs. It coated his throat, and at last he could breathe again. He sucked in great gulps of air.

Calloused fingers wiped his tear-streaked face gently. "I should have anticipated that."

"S'okay," Harry forced out. His voice was barely audible, but it was there. He took a shaky breath. "I'm sorry, but... who are you?"

Dead silence answered him.

"I mean... your voices sound so familiar. I know I know you."

"Oh Harry."

The dismay behind Lupin's soft words made him feel horribly guilty. Was it his own fault that the inside of his head was so mixed up? "I'm sorry."

"No, don't be sorry. I just didn't expect... I'm Remus Lupin, I'm your former teacher."

In his mind, Harry saw faces of men and women. He thought they might be his teachers, too, because it was that word that had caused them to float to the surface of the jumble. "Oh. Can you... can you tell me what you look like?"

There was another long moment of silence.

"Severus, what do you think?"

"Is Severus my teacher too?"

"Yes, Potter, I am." There was a brittle edge to the man's voice. "And it's _Professor Snape_ to you."

"Sorry."

"I'm going to ask you some questions, and you will answer them truthfully if you know what's good for you."

"All right," Harry said, frowning slightly. Why wouldn't he answer truthfully?

"What is your name?"

"Harry Potter."

"And your age?"

"Fifteen."

"What is the name of your school?"

Harry hesitated. He knew a number of schools. Which one was it? He knew this was not supposed to be a difficult question. "Um... Stonewall?"

He knew he had guessed wrong by the silence that answered him.

"I'm sorry. Smeltings?" An image floated before his eyes of a fat boy holding a knobby stick in a way that seemed to threaten he was about to use it to hit someone, and he knew he had made another mistake. "It isn't St. Brutus's, is it? Is it Hogwarts?"

"Yes." Lupin's voice sounded strangled. "It's Hogwarts."

"Oh." Harry was struggling with another image. A castle at the top of a cliff. Turrets rising into the night sky. Light streaming through thousands of windows. A deep lake. A forest. "Is it a castle? The school is a castle?"

"Yes."

"How did you know that, Potter?"

"I... well, as soon as I thought the name 'Hogwarts', I saw a castle in my head."

"I see. But you didn't know that it was Hogwarts when you saw it?"

"No. Everything is...."

"Everything is what, Harry?"

"Mixed up. I don't know. What _do_ you look like? I have all these faces in my head, and I don't know which one is you."

"What do you think, Severus?"

"Tell him."

"I have brown hair with quite a lot of gray. My eyes are light brown --"

"Amber."

"Yes, amber, I suppose. I have several scars across my face."

Harry easily picked him out. He just wished it all meant something to him, but though it was nice to match one of the nameless faces to a name, and a faceless name to a face, it seemed to bring him no closer to knowing the man.

"Forgetting something, Lupin? He's also a werewolf."

"Severus!"

Harry jerked back as a series of terrifying images flashed through his mind. Night. Full moon. Snarling beast.

"No, Harry, you don't need to be afraid. I'm not a danger to you."

"I'm... not," Harry said slowly. More images came to him, coming at him faster now. "I'm just seeing a lot of different things...."

"What kind of things, Potter?"

"There's... do you have a grindylow?"

"I did have one when I was teaching."

"What else, Potter?"

"I... I see a werewolf, and three kids. A man in black robes is protecting them. There's a full moon."

"The man is me."

"Is it?" Harry matched another name to a face. As he did so, a wave of unpleasant feelings assaulted him. More images came. "Do you teach Potions?"

"I do."

Harry almost started to ask if Potions was a subject he liked, then realized he already knew the answer. "Those kids... one of them is me, I think. Have I got red hair?"

"No. That's your friend, Ron."

Harry was silent for a long time, waiting out the long stream of images. Now that he knew that he had black messy hair, green eyes, round glasses, and an odd lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, a lot of things he was seeing made more sense. "And the girl?"

"Hermione. I wish I could understand what you're seeing, Harry. Severus, maybe you could...?"

"Oh, yes. Entering his mind was such a charming experience the last time."

For the second time, Harry jerked back involuntarily. He was on his knees in a dimly lit office, Professor Snape standing over him with his wand drawn. Snape had been in his mind, and it had been terrible.

"Fine," Snape said grudgingly. "_Legilemens!_"

Harry's head swam. He was suddenly seeing so many things as once that he could not make sense of any of them as they flashed by. It felt as though a high wind was ripping through his mind, scattering his jumbled thoughts even more.

Just as suddenly, it ended.

"Are you all right, Severus? Is it that bad?"

Harry was trying to catch his breath, but on hearing Lupin's words he tried to still himself.

"It's bad."

"What's wrong with him?"

"It's..." Snape stopped, letting out a long breath. "Imagine your mind as a cabinet with many compartments. Memories are stored, labeled, sorted, catalogued, cross-referenced. Some belong in more than one compartment. The mind does this without conscious thought."

"And Harry's mind?"

"It is as if the cabinet was tipped over. The memories are there, but with no sense of order. Names are separated from faces; places separated from events that occurred there; events separated from their associated emotions. There's no distinction between the mundane and the critically important."

"I've never heard of such a thing."

"Neither have I, to tell the truth. I would almost rather deal with straightforward memory loss."

Harry frowned. "Who is the man with golden hair, dressed in lavender and gold robes?"

"Gilderoy Lockhart," Snape said scathingly. "You see what I mean, Lupin. He has the memories there, and his mind is fighting to recreate the proper associations. Hold on. _Legilemens!_"

Harry didn't have time to brace himself.

Ron. Hermione. Lupin. Snape. Potions. Hogwarts.

It was too much, and when the attack on his mind ended he collapsed against the pillows behind him, hardly able to draw air into his lungs.

"It's as I thought. His mind is using the information we provided to start sorting things back into their proper places."

"Then he will recover?"

"I imagine so."

Harry's head was still swimming. Though he fought against it, he was slipping into sleep.

"Did you sense anything in his mind that should not be there?"

"I didn't."

"Then can we remove the restraints?"

Restraints. Harry wondered if that was the reason he could not move his arms.

"I'd rather we didn't yet."

His lips were forced apart with the edge of a glass, and bitter liquid flooded his mouth. He made one last effort to fight sleep, but the potion was stronger.

"Sleep, Harry. Everything will be all right."


End file.
